tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post3146540229316788009..comments2016-12-09T21:16:54.971-06:00Comments on Althouse: "Conservative Pundits: Accepting Same-Sex Marriage Is Common Sense."Ann Althousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01630636239933008807noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-19418911635156876762012-12-11T11:23:46.717-06:002012-12-11T11:23:46.717-06:00The argument in favor of gay marriage seems to say...The argument in favor of gay marriage seems to say that having and raising children is no longer the primary reason for marriage. Apparently, marriage is a civil right, based on shared assets and access to the benefits society has chosen to give to married people. <br /><br />So, I have a question: What&#39;s love got to do with it? Why can&#39;t two siblings, or parent and child, or any two otherwise unrelated friends avail themselves of the social and tax benefits of marriage? Why should we insist that the two people involved must have sex with each other? Trashhaulerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12738976179703348520noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-76963486465592733392012-12-11T02:04:34.311-06:002012-12-11T02:04:34.311-06:00Anecdotally speaking, a large % of the gays I know...<i>Anecdotally speaking, a large % of the gays I know and work with basically want to share a relationship with someone (like marriage), adopt children, work, and be left alone.</i><br /><br />Yes.MayBeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11966319657113124861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-41823777806676484222012-12-11T00:05:30.688-06:002012-12-11T00:05:30.688-06:00Anecdotally speaking, a large % of the gays I know...Anecdotally speaking, a large % of the gays I know and work with basically want to share a relationship with someone (like marriage), adopt children, work, and be left alone. EMDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15029003649395214104noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-20611111047352611452012-12-10T22:41:57.352-06:002012-12-10T22:41:57.352-06:00Joe wrote:
Conservatives claim to believe in the ...Joe wrote:<br /><br />Conservatives claim to believe in the primacy of self-determination and to keep the heavy hand of government out of their lives.<br /><br />They don&#39;t. They simply disagree with liberals about what to control in other people&#39;s lives.<br /><br> well that is true across the board for all issues for both sides, no?. Libs seem to want to tell you what kind of soda you can&#39;t drink NS tell businesses they can&#39;t allow smokers.<br /><br />But leave aside gay marriage for a sec? if you go to city hall to get a marriage license you are literally asking govt to put its heavy hand it your lives. No? <br />You could be married in spirit to your lover for your whole life, and never set foot in city hall. And yet those demanding marriage equality are demanding that. So then, why would you find it to be a problem that govt would have to come up with some rules as to when or when not to provide that marriage license.<br />And joe, are you suggesting that govt SHOULDN&#39;T tell a father and a daughter that they can&#39;t get married? If a father daughter were to go to city hall to get a marriage license and were refused, it would be because govt got involved in people&#39;s personal lives (but only insofar as telling people who are petitioning govt when they can or can&#39;t marry) and set rules against prescribing that behavior. Would that be somehow wrong to you? in the interst of equality we must allow fathers to marry daughters otherwise we are a bigoted society? how far should we extend that absolutism, and how much do you want to defend marriage equality as a civil right? kids marrying adults? you want to stand on principle for that.<br />If so, please speak up for the pedophiles right to marry?<br /> Otherwise, you too are all for having the govt getting its heavy hand into people&#39;s private lives.<br />Redefining marriage to include gays is no different than redefining it to include harems or fathers and sons, or whatever other combination you&#39;d like to include. Are you suggesting we should redefine marriage to include gays, but not include, say harems? Wouldn&#39;t that mean that those who wanted harems to be legal would be restricted from marrying those they loved, and thus denied benefits and &quot;rights&quot;? And you&#39;d be ok with hat?<br />Ultimately, the question boils down to marriage can be defined a certain way or it can&#39;t. If it can&#39;t then you could have anyone &quot;marry&quot; anyone or anything or any number of things, lest govt gets involved restricting behavior. <br />jr565http://www.blogger.com/profile/06250384040393259866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-34715760594786868262012-12-10T22:39:07.447-06:002012-12-10T22:39:07.447-06:00Some proponents of gay marriage are already clear...Some proponents of gay marriage are already clear about the long-term goal of destroying traditional marriage. From psychology professor Lisa Diamond: <em>“The only way to win the legitimacy of same-sex marriage is for gays to follow the traditional, nonthreatening couples,” Diamond said. “This strategy has been hugely effective.”<br /><br />Diamond opposed the idea that traditional, patriarchal Judeo-Christian marriage is the best option, and said winning same-sex marriage rights won’t do much to further equality. <br /><br /> “We should challenge marriage … I do want to slowly poison and destroy the marriage institution, . . ” </em> <br /><br />I don&#39;t see this as being in the best interests of society. For one thing, the most dangerous person in the life of an at-risk child, statistically, is Mom&#39;s new boyfriend (I don&#39;t know that reliable equivalent statistics are available for the children of gays and lesbians). A marriage model which encourages biological parents to raise their children together whenever possible protects children.<br /><br />Diamond quote: http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/?p=2575943Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10745939375103466210noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-26340086636729350512012-12-10T21:51:51.716-06:002012-12-10T21:51:51.716-06:00Yawn.
This relativism really is tiresome.
But it...Yawn.<br /><br />This relativism really is tiresome.<br /><br />But it seems to me that if we adopt the Kennedy line, that we all have the right to define our own existence and meaning of life, that that would preclude anyone from dictating that others recognize that a man is married to another man, even if such a thing were logically, existentially, or ontologically possible (which it isn&#39;t, as natural observation and right reason conclusively indicate).Benderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09322135500288738561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-32887033420978152642012-12-10T21:29:24.802-06:002012-12-10T21:29:24.802-06:00it&#39;s okay to discriminate racially in who you ...<i> it&#39;s okay to discriminate racially in who you date or invite to your dinner parties, but not in deciding who to hire to work in your business or who can sit in your restaurant.</i><br /><br />Since this discussion is about homosexual marriage not interracial marriage, the circumstances in which it&#39;s okay [sic, though one suspects you meant &quot;legal&quot;] to discriminate racially are irrelevant. What&#39;s important are the circumstances in which it&#39;s okay to discriminate sexually, even in the public sphere, and if your answer is &quot;never&quot; then a lot of public accommodations are wasting money on that second rest room.bgateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14094313567630214207noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-7658603198926566832012-12-10T21:20:27.073-06:002012-12-10T21:20:27.073-06:00Conservatives claim to believe in the primacy of s...Conservatives claim to believe in the primacy of self-determination and to keep the heavy hand of government out of their lives.<br /><br />They don&#39;t. They simply disagree with liberals about what to control in other people&#39;s lives.<br /><br />Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04450897654318345683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-10041303418443391872012-12-10T20:14:58.541-06:002012-12-10T20:14:58.541-06:00Two Harvard-trained gay men wrote a book giving a ...Two Harvard-trained gay men wrote a book giving a blueprint for using the mass<br />media to normalize homosexual <br />&quot;lifestyle (After the Ball; Marshall Kirk and Hunter<br />Madsen; Doubleday, 1989). The book also acknowledges that &quot;the cheating ratio of<br />&#39;married&#39; gay males, given enough time, approaches 100%...Many gay lovers, bowing to<br />the inevitable, agree to an &#39;open relationship,&#39; for which there are as many sets of ground<br />rules as there are couples&quot; (p330).&quot;<br /><br />http://www.jackmorin.com/userfiles/673622/file/GayMonogamyMiller.pdf<br /><br />Someone posted that you can&#39;t make generalizations concerning fidelity, since there are monogamous gay relationships.<br /><br />But they are the minority. Is a relationship where fidelity is not considered an important aspect of the relationship really marriage? <br /><br />As a society, we abandon these traditional concepts of marriage-- life-long commitment and fidelity at our peril. And that is just as true in heterosexual relationships. As our society rejects these values, the social problems mount.<br /><br />Abandoning yet another hallmark of marriage will not strengthen society.BrianEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15616649882871876100noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-19448477159961649432012-12-10T19:23:19.256-06:002012-12-10T19:23:19.256-06:00AA: Were you an adult in the 1980s? Are you aware...AA: <i>Were you an adult in the 1980s? Are you aware of the early career of Andrew Sullivan, when gay rights activists excoriated him?</i><br /><br /><i>Look it up! This history has gotten stuffed down the memory hole. That&#39;s what lefties do with the things that embarrass them. Which is a lot.</i><br /><br />And all of this utterly fucking irrelevant to the issue and the facts on the ground <i>now</i>.<br /><br />And lefties aren&#39;t embarrassed by anything. One would get the impression from reading your pointless exercises in nostalgia that Andrew Sullivan still gave a crap about this alleged salutary &quot;conservative&quot; force of marriage.<br /><br />You&#39;re missing the point of their maneuvers and their entirely opportunistic arguments.Anglelynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06906660380913898401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-82490963687204731542012-12-10T18:45:20.087-06:002012-12-10T18:45:20.087-06:00In France, there is now a push by the Left and the...In France, there is now a push by the Left and the gay community to degender parenting. That is, to eliminate the terms &quot;mother&quot; and &quot;father&quot; from both laws and everyday useage. <br /><br />The activist gay community is also pursuing a similar path in this country- start with a couple of law review articles, and then, once the battlespace has been prepared, move on to litigation. <br /><br />While I am a skeptical agnostic about homosexual marriage generally, I am appalled at the thought that the next step is going to be degendering parenting. So much for the claim that recognizing homosexual marriage doesn&#39;t affect straight marriages or the institution of marriage.Douglashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07916420802096618688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-72946617860854602072012-12-10T17:59:30.766-06:002012-12-10T17:59:30.766-06:00I disagree with Althouse&#39;s advice for conserva...I disagree with Althouse&#39;s advice for conservatives to embrace gay marriage. Seems to me the feminists are still trying to destroy marriage by forcing religions to renounce their role in it. <br /><br />But I don&#39;t doubt her history. Kenji Yoshino said the same thing in his 2006 book &quot;Covering&quot;. SteveOrrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05962940133648156042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-90023235864342304272012-12-10T16:54:07.042-06:002012-12-10T16:54:07.042-06:00Then again Lincoln Chaffee was once identified as ...Then again Lincoln Chaffee was once identified as a republican, and that guy is about as lefty as they come. jr565http://www.blogger.com/profile/06250384040393259866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-40790497741732061982012-12-10T16:46:21.052-06:002012-12-10T16:46:21.052-06:00Michell Dulak wrote:
In the early 2000s, when his...Michell Dulak wrote:<br /><br />In the early 2000s, when his blog was independent and not affianced (absolutely no puns intended here, I swear) to any other publication, Sullivan could get a bit sappy (cf. the &quot;mash note&quot; he wrote to/about Ronald Reagan), but for two years or so after 9/11 he was a very determined hawk. A little afterwards he did a 180 matched only by Charles Johnson. I never did understand what happened in either case. I wish I could see Sullivan sit down with (say) Bruce Bawer, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or preferably both. It is very difficult to be gay -- or female, for that matter -- in a neighborhood with a large Islamic presence.<br /><br> I remember Sully way back around 2001. The sully of 2001 is a completely different person than the sully of 2011. He himself defined his conservativism as a conservativism of doubt. Which sounds like gobbledygook to me. I take it to mean that both he and I doubt his conservatism.<br />The question is was he ever one. Jonah Goldbergs mom said to beware Sullivan as he wasn&#39;t a conservative, and perhaps she was right all along. Still, many did buy his arguments at the time and he did speak eloquently ago one point on things conservatives valued. But was he serious, or was he simply trying to push his blog. Or did he change? <br />His washy was hinges strikes me as extremely liberal, and suggests he never had those core principles to begin with. At the very least though, he shouldn&#39;t still get to call himself a conservative nor get trotted out by the media (and althouse) as a conservative voice.<br />jr565http://www.blogger.com/profile/06250384040393259866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-81589659553131170282012-12-10T16:36:08.762-06:002012-12-10T16:36:08.762-06:00Gay marriage is not marriage. It can&#39;t be. It ...Gay marriage is not marriage. It can&#39;t be. It has the word gay in front of it. Marriages require a husband and a wife. Gay marriage doesn&#39;t meet the requirement it would be like arguing 2+2 is the same as 2+3. (I&#39;m arguing definitionally).<br />So saying that something that is different should be treated the same is different than arguing that the same shouldn&#39;t be treated as the same. That argument works for interracial marriage, but not for gay marriage. Nor would it for interracial gay marriage or interracial polygamy.because that construct is not a marriage. <br />Now, the separate question is, should society provide gays the ability to codify their relationship and get benefits from it. That&#39;s a totally different question, and I&#39;m willing to bet a lot of people who are against gay marriage might be more akin to agreeing.<br /><br />But it&#39;s not a separate but equal argument. Therefore, unless you are saying that society can&#39;t discriminate IN ANY WAY when it comes to marriage (and this would include gay marriage, polygamy, bigamy, incestual marriages, marriages between adults and kids) then the libertarian argument althouse used is complete bullshit.<br />And if we&#39;re going to say that marriage means everything, then it really means nothing. jr565http://www.blogger.com/profile/06250384040393259866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-78943845521153599992012-12-10T16:33:24.703-06:002012-12-10T16:33:24.703-06:00One way or the other we should address the issue o...One way or the other we should address the issue of men having multiple sexual partners with other men (or women), it&#39;s not healthy no matter how someone wants to be liberal on the subject. Once we find a vaccine for AIDS, there will be there something new. That is how viruses work, being passed along via multiple sexual relationships. Reneehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03852754398007790428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-31339834484486784342012-12-10T16:26:31.025-06:002012-12-10T16:26:31.025-06:00They see the commercial sphere as different from p...They see the commercial sphere as different from private life. For example, it&#39;s okay to discriminate racially in who you date or invite to your dinner parties, but not in deciding who to hire to work in your business or who can sit in your restaurant.<br /><br> govt can tell restaurants how many people can be in their restaurants at one time, and that no one can smoke in a restaurant. Something tells me most would agree with the first principle and most leftist a are on board with the smoking and. Again, you CAN decide who can sit in your restaurant so long as you agree with the reason why you would restrict inclusion. It&#39;s not an absolutist position. So why then would you expect it tobe so for marriage? This AGAIN goes back to the questions of bigamy, and incestual marriages, and Underage marriages, and harems. <br />Every single time a pro gay marriage proponent argues for gay marriage they use the absolutist position and compare gay marriage to the civil rights movement nd suggest that society can&#39;t discriminate because its not ok to discriminate in the public sphere. Its not ok EVER?<br />So, if two guys and three people come to city hall and ask to be married, its not ok for society to not give them a license? If a dad comes down with his daughter and ask for a marriage, its not OK for society to say no?<br />If you can&#39;t answer that then please stop with the libertarian arguments that are only valid for say gay marriage but not for any other redefinition of marriage that someone else may want.jr565http://www.blogger.com/profile/06250384040393259866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-10986894357238344712012-12-10T16:26:11.649-06:002012-12-10T16:26:11.649-06:00Maybe trying to seek out the positive, but I knowi...<i>Maybe trying to seek out the positive, but I knowing of gay individuals in my childhood who were one of the first victims of AIDS, I initially wanted to believe that if we had gay marriage that more gay men could be truly openly gay and have monogamous relationship to stop the spread of diseases. </i><br /><br />That&#39;s an interesting point. So you were worried about gay men infecting their spouses? I don&#39;t see why marriage would stop gays from promiscuity. Nor do I think it&#39;s good to water down marriage even more than it has been.<br /><br />I&#39;m fine with that. Let&#39;s bring back fault divorce. Let&#39;s bring back the social stigma of sex outside marriage. Let&#39;s clean up the taxcode so the perks for marriage and having a stay at home partner for raising children is rewarded.<br /><br />But I&#39;ll be damned if I want to see gay marriage passed so someone can have his nancy maid prance around in his undies with survivor benefits. I equally find it offensive that aged men pass on their pensions to young women, which also happens.<br /><br />Let&#39;s fix these issues, then open up gay marriage. Let us use the social pressure, let us use the courts as they were originally constituted for marriage, and get rid of all this experimentation.<br /><br />It hasn&#39;t worked, it doesn&#39;t work, and it won&#39;t work to make a better society. If, and I hope it is, what we need and deserve. Just say no to more parasites.Dantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07393170116669470751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-29697614498714705412012-12-10T16:13:48.808-06:002012-12-10T16:13:48.808-06:00Dante,
Maybe trying to seek out the positive, but...Dante,<br /><br />Maybe trying to seek out the positive, but I knowing of gay individuals in my childhood who were one of the first victims of AIDS, I initially wanted to believe that if we had gay marriage that more gay men could be truly openly gay and have monogamous relationship to stop the spread of diseases. <br /><br />I live in Massachusetts, and the high risk behavior of multiple sexual partners exist. Gay marriage for almost ten years, and nothing. <br /><br />The gay community is socio-economically diverse, they spend millions on gay marriage initiatives which should be used for gay homeless youth. Gay marriage does little for gay people who are most at risk in our society. Reneehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03852754398007790428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-36399655406561234172012-12-10T16:10:15.777-06:002012-12-10T16:10:15.777-06:00jr565,
The problem with althouse&#39;s argument i...jr565,<br /><br /><i>The problem with althouse&#39;s argument is ascribing it as a conservative position because it was uttered by Sullivan. I think conservatives drank the kool aid because he professed to be for Margaret Thatcher. And it wasn&#39;t as if the default leftist position was anti gay marriage.</i><br /><br />Depends when you&#39;re talking, both about Sullivan and about the Leftist queer position. <br /><br />Sullivan, at one time, was a reasonable facsimile of a gay conservative. <i>Virtually Normal</i> was a good &quot;traditionalist&quot; argument for gay marriage, which is why so many people lit into it at the time. (Social conservatives did the same from the other side, IIRC, about a line about how gay male marriage might need to be more &quot;open&quot; than straight marriage. Because, I mean, we&#39;re talkin&#39; gay men here, yes?<br /><br />In the early 2000s, when his blog was independent and not affianced (absolutely no puns intended here, I swear) to any other publication, Sullivan could get a bit sappy (cf. the &quot;mash note&quot; he wrote to/about Ronald Reagan), but for two years or so after 9/11 he was a very determined hawk. A little afterwards he did a 180 matched only by Charles Johnson. I never did understand what happened in either case. I wish I could see Sullivan sit down with (say) Bruce Bawer, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or preferably both. It is very difficult to be gay -- or female, for that matter -- in a neighborhood with a large Islamic presence. Michelle Dulak Thomsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18041391162535875301noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-46681557439911193382012-12-10T16:06:09.190-06:002012-12-10T16:06:09.190-06:00You don&#39;t have to &quot;like&quot; it. You jus...<br /><br /><b>You don&#39;t have to &quot;like&quot; it. You just have to believe in individual autonomy over the personal, intimate part of life. </b><br /> <br> oh bullshit. So tell me, what stance should we take on NAMBLA? Isn&#39;t that all about the personal and intimate parts of one life. Do you believe the state can step in and tell the man boy lovers that they&#39;ll go to jail if they get all personal and intimat wirth their literal boyfriends? . Because then you don&#39;t necessarily believe that to be true at all only when it happens to be something you want to happen. Unless you want to support Man boy love on libertarian grounds. Do you? <br /><br /><br><br /><b>They see the commercial sphere as different from private life. For example, it&#39;s okay to discriminate racially in who you date or invite to your dinner parties, but not in deciding who to hire to work in your business or who can sit in your restaurant.</b><br />Can you post a sign in your restaurant that if you don&#39;t wear a shirt that you&#39;ll get no service? Can there be black colleges and women&#39;s colleges? Businesses and institutions can and do discriminate all the time. And since when does not discriminating along racial lines equate to you can&#39;t discriminate along ANY lines?<br />Gay marriage is not a racial discrimination argument (and its disingenuous to argue on those grounds). One could argue that you can&#39;t discriminate against Interracial couples because at the end o the day a black man is still a man and a white woman is still a woman. Therefore if they are going to marry they still would meet all the requirements for marriage. Ie man woman, husband wife, bride, groom. Gay marriage though is not the same. There, there are two brides or two grooms. <br />Since they are different institutions requiring different vocabulary you can&#39;t make the separate but equal argument. The left, and althouse are certainly doing it but its disingenuous to say the least. And we<br />Shouldn&#39;t be shamed into agreeing to a<br />Faulty premise because of cries of homophobia.<br />Actually, gay marriage is like separate but equal in the same way that &quot;no shirt no service&quot; is like separate but equal.jr565http://www.blogger.com/profile/06250384040393259866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-39830794726332600922012-12-10T16:04:35.764-06:002012-12-10T16:04:35.764-06:00&#39;D’ is for Divorce: Sesame Street Tackles Anot...<a href="http://healthland.time.com/2012/12/10/d-is-for-divorce-sesame-street-tackles-another-touchy-topic/" rel="nofollow">&#39;D’ is for Divorce: Sesame Street Tackles Another Touchy Topic</a><br /><br /><br />Seem to be 20 years too late, a good number of children watching the show come from parents who were never married to begin with. <br /><br />If marriage has nothing to do with children, then why does divorce can have such a detrimental effect on children? Reneehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03852754398007790428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-18133298269633162162012-12-10T16:00:28.713-06:002012-12-10T16:00:28.713-06:00My memory (supplemented by the NY Times archives) ...<i><br />My memory (supplemented by the NY Times archives) is that the push for gay marriage, or a legal equivalent, was sparked by the AIDS crisis and an urgent desire to be eligible for a partner&#39;s health insurance or rent-controlled lease.</i><br /><br />Right, it&#39;s not about &quot;equal rights&quot; at all. It&#39;s about getting the perks that are there for people who are raising the next generation of tax payers.<br /><br />It&#39;s OK, in Obama&#39;s world, there&#39;s lots of money to go around. Just not enough people to take it from.Dantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07393170116669470751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-627886251873442322012-12-10T15:59:24.165-06:002012-12-10T15:59:24.165-06:00Lyssa,
Our children do not care how long we wait...Lyssa, <br /><br />Our children do not care how long we waited for them, whether we had them sooner or later. What matters is our children benefit from their mother having healthy stable relationships with their father, no matter the point within their marriage. <br /><br />If not for children, then why should the government care? <br /><br />If marriage in our society is so far removed from childbearing, shouldn&#39;t our husbands take a paternity test like other non-married men to prove fatherhood? <br /><br />Reneehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03852754398007790428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-70070252651876207512012-12-10T15:58:03.272-06:002012-12-10T15:58:03.272-06:00However, you are definitely incorrect that the rea...<i>However, you are definitely incorrect that the reason for marriage is to build an environment for child-rearing. That is one reason, and certainly an important one. It is not, however, in any way the only reason. </i><br /><br />There is a difference between:<br /><br />&quot;The reason for marriage&quot;<br /><br />And<br /><br />&quot;Why people get married.&quot;<br /><br />Marriage is the grand compromise between the sexes. Guys get gals that don&#39;t cheat on them, and Gals get guys that hang around and support the offspring.<br /><br />It&#39;s popped up independently all over the world, and has its roots in China around 3,000 years ago, India about the same, etc.<br /><br />So yes, in the sense no one can &quot;know&quot; anything, I agree with you. However, what is increasingly clear is growing up in single female households increases the chance kids will engage in what is now termed &quot;risky&quot; behavior. As opposed to what it used to be, which was being delinquents. But I agree, it&#39;s not &quot;known&quot; yet why.<br /><br />However, there is an arrogance on leftists to push &quot;alternate&quot; families, encouraging, them in a wholesale manner on the entire population. It makes zero sense to me to experiment with everyone&#39;s future for some liberal idea of &quot;Fairness,&quot; or whatever problem leftists think they are solving. That goes for middle of the roaders, too. And please, let us not define deviancy down to suit the leftists either.Dantehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07393170116669470751noreply@blogger.com